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Planned Nuclear Reactors Will Destroy Atomic Waste
separsons writes "A group of French scientists are developing a nuclear reactor that burns up actinides — highly radioactive uranium isotopes. They estimate that 'the volume of high-level nuclear waste produced by all of France’s 58 reactors over the past 40 years could fit in one Olympic-size swimming pool.' And they're not the only ones trying to eliminate atomic waste: Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are working on a fusion-fission reactor. The reactor destroys waste by firing streams of neutrons at it, reducing atomic waste by up to 99 percent!"
Nuclear, like it or not, is the intermediate solution to first world energy needs. As long as we can mitigate past mistakes (sloppy arms races) with technology such as this, nuclear will also have a promising future.
--I like turtles...
Clean nuclear is far more realistic than the fantasy that is clean coal.
I don't see a problem with diversifying. I assume we'll run out of fissionable material at some date, and if solar can help slow that down, then bring it on.
Sent from my PDP-11
"I guess we don't have you to thank for civil rights, women's rights and now healthcare. I mean, why bother ?"
Those are emotional issues, which attract the same sort of emotional activists who HATE nuclear power. Their particular flavor of idealistic outlook is not pro-technology.
Come up with something that uses solar, ponies, or solar ponies and they might bite.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Come up with something that uses solar, ponies, or solar ponies and they might bite.
And then you'll have the animal right activists complaining.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Because they hate progress, not nuclear power. If the general public could understand who really apposes Nuclear power and their reasons are simply that they want to return us to some mythical agrarian society where everyone lives off vegetables they grow in their back yards and spends the evening reading books and listening to bluegrass, I think we might have a chance. But as-is they just associate any nuclear reaction with BOMB and all the sheep get scared.
And the times before that it was Reagan and Bush Sr. who killed the breeder reactor research project. And before that is was Carter. This is not a partisan issue, both parties are equally retarded in respect to nuclear power.
Some of us have been saying for decades that another way to say "nuclear waste" is "nuclear fuel." The current view of "spent" fuel is akin to refining crude oil to make gasoline and then having to store all the waste diesel, fuel oil and other petroleum byproducts until the end of time.
The anti-nuclear group will always come up with something to deter nuclear plants from taking off.
And the pro-nuclear group will always have a reason why nuclear plants are never a danger, any accident would never happen again, and nuclear waste is absolutely no problem because waste from burning coal is more radioactive, so that means concentrated nuclear waste has to be safer than diffuse coal plant waste, just like a glass of arsenic is safer to drink than a glass of sea water because there's more arsenic in the ocean than in a glass of arsenic. Strawmen are fun on both sides!
"Succeed on its own merits..." Boy, that's a laugh.
The US nuclear industry has lagged behind because for the past 50 years, the regulatory and political environment allowed anti-nuclear activists to delay the completion of plants indefinitely. You can't make a profit from a power plant without actually producing power; the anti-nuclear groups simply stalled the completion of plants until the companies gave up on the existing projects and walked away. Nobody tried to start new projects because they weren't willing to risk $10 billion on what might amount to a really ugly paperweight.
The nuclear industry never had a chance to succeed on its own merits. If they halted after they lost the taxpayer handout, it was because that was the only thing left letting them make a profit.
The US nuclear industry has lagged behind because for the past 50 years, the regulatory and political environment allowed anti-nuclear activists to delay the completion of plants indefinitely.
Oh the hyperbole. 50 years ago (53 for you nitpickers) Shippingport came online. You know, "the first fully civilian nuclear reactor." Nuclear power industry was just starting to appear, and the "regulatory and political environment" was anything but inimical to it. Rather gung-ho, in fact.
The past 30 years instead of 50? Probably. But not without good reason. An industry mired in secrecy and obfuscation stemming from its military origins, where screw-ups can happen and are serious -- potentially disastrous -- if they do, does not inspire confidence. Neither does pooh-poohing genuine concerns. "Waste? Oh, that's easy, we'll just reprocess it!" Sure. Hanford did that for years. Recovered tons of weapons fuel, ended up with additional megatons of extremely nasty waste. (Ditto Sellafield in the UK and La Hague in France.) There are better ways to do it for civilian use, and actinide burners may be one of them, which is why they should be built and studied; but they -- and all other things nuclear -- should not be presented as a silver bullet, in an arrogant and condescending tone.
Some may get an impression that I am too opposed to nuclear power. Not in the least. IMO, nuclear is the only sufficiently plentiful energy supply which we can comfortably use for the next thousand years, and is not geographically or otherwise limited like solar or wind. But it is not without risks, and while those risks should not be overstated (like the shrillest environmentalists do), they should not be swept under the carpet, either.